The battlefield had gone quiet.
The fog clung low over the churned-up earth, soaked with blood and streaked with the dead. Crows circled overhead, black dots against a gray sky that never changed.
The man lay in the mud, half-propped on a shattered elbow, his body screaming with pain. Every breath rattled in his lungs. His vision swam. He'd done it, barely. But every inch of him wanted to just lay there and rest after his fight for survival.
The ground trembled.
Heavy footfalls approached from the fog where the giant figures stood watching throughout. The largest of the giants emerged. This one was different; broader, older, and more imposing. Covered almost head to toe in the tattoos that seemed to move like water.
He came to stand over the corpse of the fallen younger giant, the one the man had killed.
For a long moment, the towering warrior simply looked down at the body. Then, with no ceremony, he crouched and shoved two thick fingers into the dead giant's mouth.
With a wet crack, he tore free a single massive canine, still dripping with blood, and turned to face the man on the ground.
He tossed it.
It hit the mud just in front of him with a thump.
The man stared at it. The tooth was nearly the size of his forearm. Jagged. Weighty. Ancient-looking. A trophy.
Or maybe a token of honor.
The giant grunted, his deep voice slurring through unfamiliar syllables but somehow hitting like a familiar song.
"Human… settlement. That way."
He jabbed a thick finger eastward, toward the distant fog.
"Few hour walk. Most of your kind… just end selves. Pain. Struggle. Too much for the weak."
The words hung in the air.
The man didn't speak at first. Didn't look up.
His fingers curled slowly around the tooth.
Something cracked, not in his bones, but in his mind. A shift. Something long frozen gave way.
"End myself? After all this?"
No.
Not now.Not ever.
He pushed himself upright with a grunt, one knee trembling, jaw clenched, blood running down his face. The world blurred and wobbled, but his spine straightened.
He turned, the tooth in hand.
"See you tomorrow," he said.
Then he started walking. East, into the fog. Walking through the pain.
Behind him, the other seven survivors turned. As he passed, they silently joined him. No one spoke. No one needed to. Their bodies were broken. Their spirits weren't.
Something had happened out there.
Something more than survival.More than luck.They shared it now.
The giant leader watched them go with a low, rumbling laugh. It wasn't mocking.
It was curious.
Intrigued.
"See you tomorrow…" he repeated to himself with a smirk.
The walk took longer than a few hours.
The land between the battlefield and the human outpost was no man's land, silent hills and shallow craters, scorched tree trunks and the wreckage of old skirmishes. They passed the remains of others: armor still clinging to bones, weapons rusted where they'd been dropped.
But they made it.
By the time they reached the settlement, the sky had not changed—still the same leaden gray, with no sun to mark the passing of time.
What greeted them was not hope, but walls.
Massive, broken stone battlements half-consumed by ivy and patchwork timber. Steel spikes jutted from the gateposts. Scorch marks covered the outer walls. There were no banners—just torches, burning low, and a smell of oil, ash, and boiled food.
The map flickered again behind his eyes, lines and borders carved into his mind like old scars. This was the first province, the one no faction could claim. The land around them showed why: a graveyard of forgotten wars, all twisted metal and crumbling trenches, where rust had outlasted memory.
But beyond the ruined outskirts stood the city.
Precipice; It gleamed faintly through the haze of the fog, walls of white stone unbroken by battle, towers untouched by flame. No scars. No siege marks. A city that had never fallen, because it couldn't. The war stopped at its gates.
They said this province was called The Fall, not for defeat, but for what came after. Everyone began here, standing at the edge of what they once were, staring into the unknown.
Precipice was the last solid ground before the drop.
And beyond it, the war waited.
Inside the gates of the outskirts: a courtyard of chaos and quiet in equal measure.
Veterans lounged near open fires, scarred and armored, swapping stories over skewered meat and tin mugs of something steaming. Their armor was mismatched but lived-in. They looked tired—but not weak. These were people who had died a hundred times and still found reasons to laugh.
Elsewhere, a different scene.
Freshly revived newcomers, raw, wide-eyed, and trembling, sat on crates, curled in corners, or huddled near fire pits. Many sobbed. Others stared blankly. A few were being gently guided by older soldiers, voices low and slow, explaining how death worked here, how resurrection felt, what the rules were, at least the ones they knew.
The gates creaked open, and eight figures walked through.
Bloody. Limping. Torn.
Makeshift weapons still in hand. Eyes forward.
The courtyard fell silent.
Conversations stopped. Mugs hovered midair. Even the veterans turned to look.
It wasn't just the blood that drew their eyes, it was the way the eight moved. Slow, steady, deliberate. No panic. No confusion. The kind of posture that only came from facing something that should have killed you, and walking away anyway.
No one said a word.
Because these eight weren't new recruits who just walked out of the outer temple like the other newcomers.
These eight had walked here.
Through the battlefield.Through the fog.After killing giants.
They didn't look victorious. They looked real. Like people who'd stared into the black heart of this world and decided to embrace it.
One old soldier near the fire let out a low whistle.
"Well, I'll be damned…"
The eight of them hobbled through the gates. Their clothes were shredded, their skin coated in mud and dried blood, most of it theirs, some of it not.
But they walked under their own power.
That alone made them different.
Most newcomers stumbled out of the temple screaming or dazed. These eight had stepped into hell and walked out again.
The camp had quieted in their wake. From beside a cookfire, an older fighter rose to meet them, gray in the beard, a scar cutting through one dead eye. His gait was slow but steady, the kind of slow that meant he could still kill a man before most could blink.
People in the outskirts looked up to him: this man called Raff. He had the skill to fight in the provincial wars but chose to stay here, guiding the newly reborn until they could stand on their own. He believed Precipice needed a steady hand to greet the lost and newly reborn.
He gave them a once-over with his good eye and let out a dry chuckle.
"You look like a mud sculpture someone tried to teach to fight," he said, arms crossed. "But you made it. That counts."
None of the eight replied. They just kept walking, makeshift weapons still in hand, blood still dripping.
Raff fell into step beside them, voice casual.
"I could end you quick," he said, as if offering food or water. "You'd wake in the temple without the pain. Clean body, clean clothes, hot meal waiting. Most who come in half-dead ask for that."
He glanced to his side, studying them.
"You've got more resolve than most," he said. "That fire's rare. You sure you want to limp around until your bones remember how to hate you? I can make it quick."
They stopped, not all at once, but one by one.
The man with the tooth turned slightly, still clutching it like a token, or a reminder.
"No."
Raff blinked, then laughed softly. This time it was genuine, deep, rough, and edged with respect.
"Suit yourselves," he said, stepping aside with a smile.
They walked on. Conversations around the camp slowly resumed. The tension eased. But something had changed in the air; subtle, unspoken.
The veterans had seen countless newcomers before.
These eight were different.